Abdel Rahman Elsaka

Professor Aisha Sidibe

English 110

4 May 2019

 

Language and Colonialism: Colonialism Exterminating The Colony’s Language

           Some people think that exterminating someone’s original language tortures their soul. Being forced to learn and speak someone else’s tongue and obliterating the mother language is the worst kind of oppression. It is like taking away a soldier’s weapon in the middle of a war. And this is what most of the colonizing countries did to their colonies. They tortured millions of people by using methods of oppression to erase their identity, the identity that reflects through language and literature. As some people may argue that Linguistic colonialism and imperialism is somehow beneficial to the colonized nation by letting the people of that nation get more open to the outside world. However, Linguistic colonialism brainwashes people minds by whipping out their culture and forcing them to use the colonized countries culture. This brainwash eventually weakens society, which leads to diseases and ignorance.

An excellent way to have control over a country or a nation is by slightly changing their language or by forcing them to speak in other tongues. And this is the method the colonizing European countries used in their colonized nations. For example, England forced most of their colonies in Africa to speak in English, and Spain made almost all of their colonies in South America to speak only in Spanish. This method helped to control these nations for a very long time. Somehow Language is one of the essential things that empower nations and helps to overcome any oppression. Languages shape people’s minds and build it and the way they see the world. According to Ngugi Wa Thiong’s, “Thus one of the most humiliating experiences was to be caught speaking Gikuyu in the vicinity of the school”(287). Students could get suspended or even humiliated just for trying to speak their original language with each other. The language that they valued and loved is all of a sudden considered inappropriate (Thiong’o 287). This is, therefore, why Linguistic colonialism is detrimental to the soul.

The forced and the repeated subjugation by the occupying countries could lead the colonies to submitting to their well. The occupied people would start unconsciously forgetting their language and would start using the occupation’s language and also would start speaking like them after a very long process of brainwashing. ” And my mother taught me to eat my food in the English way: the knife in the right hand, the fork in the left, my elbows held still close to my side, the food carefully balanced on my fork and then brought up to my mouth. When I had finally mastered it, I overheard her saying to a friend, “Did you see how nicely she can eat?” (Kincaid 366). Jamaica Kincaid here trying to show how her mother is brainwashed because of how she adopted the English culture. Moreover, as Ngugi Wa Thiong’o said in the language of African literature “English became the measure of intelligence and ability in the arts, the sciences, and all the other branches of learning” (287), which explains how Kincaid’s mother somewhat was brainwashed

(Nicholls, 2016).

The British colonization solidified the idea of the English language and culture is the measure of intelligence and nobleness. However, brainwashing can never be considered mind opening or educating in any way; instead, it narrows down people’s minds and makes it shallow.

As argued in previous studies, prestige is not the only element that favors a specific language over the other. Changing to a certain language is usually linked with certain benefits that are attained from the usage of the language especially economically. Else, if this was not the case at hand, then people would stick to the original languages that they have spoken in traditionally though they may need a new language for interaction purposes. This behavior should be strictly benefit-oriented. Several third world nations hardly shift to the European languages simply because the alternatives they get may not likely improve the state of their conditions. Division of labor, for instance, relies on the indigenous language used in the lower sectors of the economy making it quite unnecessary to target foreign languages given that the job opportunities aligned to them are reduced.

Immigrants have shifted severally to dominant languages since this has emerged as the only languages used by the colonies to drive the economic systems. Therefore, if they are to gain something then they should make the shift. On the other hand, they may avoid danger by failing to compete altogether in the open job markets. Slaves have given up their languages simply due to the fact that no one else could speak the same. This is the key reason why kids never bothered to learn their parent’s languages, for instance, the kids who grew up in African cities. These kids take it that they have all to gain in communicating in the colonial language quite fluently as they could.

Questions have arisen as to whether linguists may assist in making particular languages to thrive. They have tried this by encouraging speakers to take pride in their ancestral heritage. They argue that even if they have no control over the prevailing situations, they may successfully lead their people in giving up their native languages. Language endangerment has been a real preoccupation amongst linguists. There is a certain level of guilt existing amongst linguists because they are accused of being concerned with the negative phenomenon. They claim that they would have received extra attention and even manage to state the fact that history never forgets. Linguists are not like environmentalists because they always care about losing what matters to their research profession, that is, languages. Several publications have further pushed them higher (Heller, Monica & McElhinny, 2017).

The language preservation issue has remained as confusing as ever given the fact that little maintenance and focus is hardly ever undertaken. Linguists who have various part line being their primary verbal or written makes them privileged to the system of schooling because it saves the language from becoming endangered.

There has been minimal scholarship invested in comprehending the language ecology and all that it takes to sustain a highly vital language. Such occurrence is experienced in territories that have many languages co-existing quite happily with each other from an efficient division of labor contained in repertoires. This essay is more of a general theoretical response highlighting the characteristics of languages, arguing that languages do not kill each other but instead their speakers do. Speakers would give them up although they do this in situations where they find themselves as victims of socio-economic and ecological changes as they keep evolving. Solutions that fully focus on the victims but not the causes of plights have emerged way worse than the poor environmental solutions that affect the species but not the ecologies affecting these species.

Arguably, language mirrors a culture since in itself it is part of the culture. There are several changes that affect language such as reflecting the changes occurring in a certain culture. For maintenance purposes, the speakers of a language may reflect various judgments in value as linguists and in rating the ancestral culture as compared to the one being fashioned by the linguistic behavior of the speaker. The biggest issue arises when nothing is completely undertaken to advocate for the change of ecology that has been adopted by speakers. Linguists have become very different from an environmentalist who has noticed that survival of a specific species relies heavily on the restoration of ecology where they thrive. Linguists have proposed that there is a huge need for rescuing the endangered languages while speakers should keep their traditional behavioral patterns of communicating no matter the changes in socioeconomic ecologies (Alexander & James, 2018). At least someone must be in a position to explain how adaptive the resistance to change is affecting their language and the ability to keep speaking in vernacular considering the ecological structures would barely survive if not supported.

In the ancient times, Africans had words for everything. The language was oiled by words and vocabularies that occupied the center stage amongst the functioning communities. At that time everything had been stolen from Africa except the language. Currently, language too has become a casualty of white-washing and discrediting of the ancient African. Decimation of the native language and culture has wrecked a lot of havoc on the joint psyche of the thoughts and advancement for African culture. The loss and stunting of the native language has denuded a population that was once proud and of good history and purpose. Many generations spanning several decades have spent a lot of their time learning and mastering languages, cultures and oppressors which is to the detriment of the entire well-being.

The colonization period has seen the disappearance of words form normal usage and circulation. However, the few remaining words have lost their initial meaning and have even become prone to various matters. To oppress the natives further, there has been an increase in the natives taking on their culture and language to help them observe themselves in lenses and paradigms that would enslaver them a lot. Africans then have had a false sense of belonging where they have managed to sooth their determination to look like they are part of it and not yet declared far apart. They strive not to distort the sense of purpose in advancing the economic uplift of oppressors while attaining little or no pat on the back.

Outright hate and racist attacks begun in the missionary days. Colonizers suppressed their colonies by destroying institutions, their native traditions, and religion and then superimposed on the native events that ruined their governing power. This administrative system explains the start of the fading away of the native language. Secondly, the colonizers grafted higher civilization that was rooted soundly on the native stock of bringing the best of the native traditions and molding it to consonants that have modern ideas and standards. In essence, colonization is not considered the desire of God but unfortunately it had to happen.

The other effective manner through which the natives were suppressed was through placing a device that disassociated the people from God. These devices focused on cutting the people’s spirituality, culture and history. Missionaries managed to place their continual empowerment on the minds of the people who deceived them using religion. Lesser and lesser usage meanings of words were established through cultures and traditions that lessened while disappearing in the end. It was so necessary for slave traders and masters to continually mis-educate and in some instances even kill the older slaves. These all were in attempts to sweep away the walking history books and dictionaries that had sufficient knowledge to pass down to others. The old slaves possessed the blueprint of cauldron amongst national pride, purpose and identities. The only remaining link happened to be dignity, knowledge traditions, cultures and wisdom (Heller, Monica & McElhinny, 2017). Throughout the African context, customs appeared to be painfully prohibitive though classified as barbaric and backward enough. People were evoked in terms of the past sense of being, justice and purpose.

Summary

In summary, the prevailing ecology may not be changed therefore linguists should focus on other realistic methods of language preservation. Colonialism attracts a huge investment in terms of time into understanding foreign languages at the expense of the natural language of the colony. Colonization has regulated the element of language shift given that there have been some losses of languages as well as the emergence of newer ones. The balance sheet of both gains and losses have varied with the varying times of history. Linguistics must be supported in their strive to deal with language endangerment especially in terms of costs and benefits involved. My ultimate position is that the costs and benefits to the language speakers in adapting socioeconomic changes would affect them no matter the central role played. Speakers of a language are way more important to the world as compared to the environmentalist discourse and their languages (Korang, Larbi & Slemon, 2017).

 

https://www.ted.com/talks/lera_boroditsky_how_language_shapes_the_way_we_think?language=en

This is a video that explains how languages are very important in shaping our personalities and minds.

 

                                          

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Alexander, Simone A. James. “NINE: POSTCOLONIAL HAUNTINGS: GHOSTLY PRESENCE IN JAMAICA KINCAID’S THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MY MOTHER.” Wagadu: a Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies19 (2018): 107-130.

Heller, Monica, and Bonnie McElhinny. Language, capitalism, colonialism: Toward a critical history. University of Toronto Press, 2017.

Korang, Kwaku Larbi, and Stephen Slemon. “Post-colonialism and language.” Writing and Africa. Routledge, 2017. 246-263.

Nicholls, Brendon. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Gender, and the Ethics of Postcolonial Reading. Routledge, 2016.

Kincaid, Jamaica. “On Seeing England for the First Time.” Transition, no. 51, 1991, pp. 32–40. JSTOR,

Ngũgĩ, wa T. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: J. Currey, 1986.